New York, NY (May 8, 2008) – From Reuters:
…Nine major record labels filed suit against an online music provider on Monday, accusing Project Playlist Inc of a "massive infringement" of their copyrights to the songs of artists such as U2 and Gwen Stefani.
Project Playlist (http://www.projectplaylist.com) enables its users to easily find, play and share music with others for free, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The website compiles a vast index of songs on the Internet and users can "quickly and easily search the index for recordings by their favorite artists. At the click of a mouse, Project Playlist instantly streams a digital performance of the selected recording to the user, who can listen to it on his or her computer or mobile device," the lawsuit said.
Ahaha wow. I’m amazed they got away with it for this long. You can’t get much more blatant than that. I can understand a service where you keep everything on the social space; that might have been an idea the labels considered. But to be able to rip it to your portable device is just BEGGING for a lawsuit. I’m going to have to read up more about this, but the facts here seem pretty cut and dry.
However, to the effect of a portable devices, Microsoft and the Zune have upped the ante with their latest improvements. Coincidentally to the last item, the new Zune has social functionality built in. In short, friends with a Zune can peruse each other’s playlist and listen along if they’d like. Zune has also opened up the television vault and are making some pretty cool stuff available. Read the full press release here.
